"Only through philosophical and rational education, argued Plato, could anyone escape the cave and ascend into the world of sunlight, that is, reality as it truly is. However apt (or crude) Plato’s metaphor, what if indeed we could slip out, and get behind appearance, sensation, and phenomena in order to explore reality as it is in itself without the innate human filters that color and package it for us as appearance and phenomena—what would there be? What does the elusive thing-in-itself look like, feel like, smell like, taste like. All we know of reality, even that that arises from pure reason alone, comes to us only as neuro-electrical-chemical processes that ignite quietly within a soggy darkness covered by skin and skull."